By Debra Wirth
A call for a national public inquiry into the policy of removing
Aboriginal children from their families has been launched by the
Secretariat of the National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care
(SNAICC).
Under the assimilationist policies of successive Australian
governments, continued until the late 1960s, at least 5000
Aboriginal children in NSW alone were taken from their homes.
The usual justification for this forced removal was that the
children could be ``educated''. Generally this meant domestic
service for girls and menial manual labour for boys. The children
were mostly placed at great distances from their families, making
contact virtually impossible. This policy was aimed at wiping out
an entire people.
When, as a result of protests, wholesale removals were ended,
they were replaced with more subtle policies which had the same
effect. In Victoria, for example, Aboriginal children could still
be removed from their families up until the early 1970s after the
filing of a Care and Protection Application. Children removed in
this way usually became wards of the state.
According to a paper entitled ``Aboriginal Children and Youth in
Care'', by Stewart Murray, the most common grounds used to file a
Care and Protection Application were:
``* Abandonment. (Children left with relatives while their
parents were away seeking seasonal work, were considered to be
`abandoned'. No pensions or Supporting Parents' Benefits were
available at that time.)
``* No visible means of support or no settled home. (Aboriginal
families without an income, sharing accommodation with kin were
considered to have `no visible means of support'.)
``* Living or in company of known vagrants or criminals. (All too
many Aboriginal people had been charged and convicted of
`vagrancy' thus toting up a criminal record.)
``* Under unfit guardianship. (Aboriginal parents would have to
prove they were fit guardians - all too often value judgments of
the charging officer decided Aboriginal parents were `unfit'.)
``* Likely to lapse into vice or crime: exposed to moral danger.
(These two charges were frequently used to remove children from
parents who had been previously charged with vagrancy, in
instances where an unmarried mother was living in a de-facto
relationship and was considered to be a prostitute.)''
Brian Butler, chairperson of SNAICC, said of the call for a
public inquiry: ``Literally thousands of Aboriginal adults live
with the trauma caused by these removal policies. Many of the
mothers and fathers who had their children taken away are guilt-
and grief-stricken. Their children are traumatised by the thought
that they were unwanted. Identity conflicts rage in these
children - now adults - who have lived most of their lives as
non-Aboriginal people.''
One in six Aboriginal children were removed from their families,
according to Dr Peter Read of the History Department of the
Australian National University. Virtually no Aboriginal family
has been unaffected by these policies.
Butler said the inquiry was needed to determine how many children
were taken from their families and how. ``We want the inquiry to
hear from Aboriginal people about how they have been affected and
what must be done to compensate.
``We also want to consider whether these policies fall within the
definition of genocide in article II (e) of the United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide.''
For more information, contact Nigel D'Souza from SNAICC in
Melbourne on (03) 417 6744 or (03) 489 2543 (ah).
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Reprinted from Green Left, weekly progressive newspaper. May
be reproduced with acknowledgment but without charge by
movement publications and organisations.